ABC Books had a book signing yesterday, so after a triathlon, my boys and I headed to that part of town. They came along because we planned to demolish the nearby Sushi buffet, which we did prior to the late-starting 12:00 book signing.
The author in residence wrote a book about a local attorney who was convicted of fraud of some sort, and apparently relations of the man had beaten me to ABC Books, which led to an awkward reunion. But nothing broke out while I was there.
I got a few books.
I got:
- A Bad Love in the Ozarks by Edward Gwin, the signing author.
- Generation B Music and Melodies by Ernie Bedell, a book about a musical family written by a member of that family and a local jazz musician. No telling if he’s related to Gary Bedell, the local comic artist, but you never can tell. I suppose if I dug around on Facebook, I could get an inkling, but for a blog post that’s only going to be read by a handful of people and me when I read these books, that’s a lot of work.
- When I first tried to spend my Christmas gift card last month, I mentioned I had my eyes on a nice Easton Press edition of Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell. I mentioned having some gift cards, but I found more ABC Books gift cards. So I had $170 in unused ABC Books Gift Cards, the Easton Press books were back on sale for 25% off. So, yeah, I got it this time. And as it’s a book about Orwell in the Spanish Civil War, it has a Wartime Setting, so I can start getting Dorito dust on this fine copy as early as now. But I likely will choose something shorter for the 2023 Winter Reading Challenge as I only have sixteen days left and four books to read in that time.
So the total out-of-pocket was $17 and change today even with the nice edition and the local books.
Although I’m a little sad that I tipped my hand to Mrs. E. that we’re not giving out a bunch of gift cards as gifts these days. We tend to give $10 gift cards to the boys’ teachers as there are so many of them now and they live and work (perhaps) in the next town and not almost halfway between us and ABC Books. I’m sad on many accounts, here, but I’m happy to have the nice Orwell. Now, how will I pay for the other fine editions and sets of Riley’s poetry in north Springfield?
